I originally published this essay as a Facebook note in August 2015. I am now moving it to American Pathos.

Comes today news that researchers have used DNA analysis to confirm, finally, that President Warren G. Harding was the father of Elizabeth Ann Harding-Blaesing, the daughter of the infamous Nan Britton. Britton’s grandson produced a DNA sample, something neither Britton nor her child ever agreed to do. This sample, solicited by collateral descendants of Harding, proved that Harding’s grand-nephew and Nan Britton’s grandson are second cousins.

In an age when most wild historical claims collapse in the face of science, depriving historical romantics (such as I) of something magical, we now find that the maligned Ms. Britton was telling the truth all along.

Since I am, perhaps, the closest thing Henry County, Tennessee has to a Warren G. Harding scholar (this is not a boast, just a self-deprecating observation), I feel that I must write a few words.

If you are hazy on the Harding/Britton saga, here is a bit of background.

In the early 1910s, Warren G. Harding, who was in his mid-40s, was Marion, Ohio’s leading citizen and the publisher of the Marion Star. He lived in a comfortable house on Mount Vernon Avenue with his sickly, unattractive, and somewhat shrewish wife, Florence, who was five years older than he and whom he called “The Duchess.” Harding, himself, was tall, distinguished, a dapper dresser, and quite handsome in a middle-aged-politician sort of way. Women found him attractive. Men who liked him enjoyed his convivial, humble manner. Political and business rivals remembered that it had long been alleged that Harding had at least one African-American ancestor, a charge that would go national during the 1920 presidential campaign and one that was also disproved through DNA today.

One of the women who found Harding most attractive was actually a girl, 14 years old in 1910, when Harding was 45, Nan Britton, who lived nearby on Gospel Hill. Harding was prominent in Ohio politics, and Britton developed a crush on him. Britton’s own father, who was friendly with Harding, told him that Nan had newspaper pictures of him (Harding) taped to the wall of her bedroom. One of Britton’s surviving school notebooks bears the doodle, “Warren G. Harding/He’s a Darling.” In time, Britton began to flirt with Harding, sometimes in front of Florence. It was cute at first, but the cuteness wore thin as Nan matured—and Nan definitely matured. In 1914, Harding was elected to the United States Senate and moved to Washington. He did not see Nan Britton again for several years.

In time, Nan grew to be a beautiful young woman. In need of a job, she moved to New York and, remembering that she had an acquaintance with Senator Warren G. Harding, wrote him a letter to see if he could help her find employment. Harding wrote back that he would be glad to help her and would travel to New York to meet with her. By Nan’s own admission, she and Harding became intimate (though not fully so) on their first rendezvous in New York.

Nan would later claim that she and Harding had a torrid but deeply loving affair. Though she seems to have been aware of the rumors, Nan probably did not know the full extent of Harding’s years-long relationship with his neighbor, Carrie Phillips, the wife of one of his best friends, an affair that has long since been verified beyond a doubt. By Britton’s account, she and Harding met whenever they could—in Washington, New York, and at various out-of-the-way towns. Florence Harding had kidney disease and several times nearly died during this period. Though Harding always took good care of Florence during these episodes, he and Britton would chat lovingly of a time when Florence would be gone and they could marry. During those same years, Harding was writing of similar longings to Mrs. Phillips.

Sometime in early 1919 (as verified today), Britton became pregnant with Harding’s child, conceived, she said, on the sofa in his Senate office. In October, she gave birth to his daughter, Elizabeth Ann. According to Nan, Harding never saw the child, since by 1920 he was considered a second-tier contender for the Republican presidential nomination, and he was afraid that the press would discover his secret. He regularly gave Nan money for her use and for the care of Elizabeth Ann, and his life must have grown more complicated when the Republicans made him their standard-bearer that summer.

On November 2, 1920, Harding turned 55 and was elected president of the United States. Seven days later, Nan Britton turned 24. Britton would claim that her affair with Harding continued during his presidency, and, presaging the Clinton affair of the 1990s, she asserted that they once had sex in a small “anteroom” off the presidential office and were nearly caught by the ever-watchful Florence.

In June 1923, Harding and a large entourage embarked on the “Voyage of Understanding,” a cross-country tour that took the president all the way to Fairbanks, Alaska. Returning to the Lower 48, Harding fell ill in Oregon. The remainder of the trip was cancelled, and the president was taken to a hotel in San Francisco. On August 2, 1923, Harding died there.

In 1928, frustrated, she claimed, in her appeals for help from the Harding relatives, Nan Britton, with the assistance of her employer, published The President’s Daughter, widely considered the first American “kiss-and-tell” book. When no respectable publishing house would touch the work, Britton and her boss established the Elizabeth Ann Guild, dedicated the book to all “unwed mothers,” and published it themselves. The book almost never saw the light of day, since agents of an early “vice squad” seized the printing plates before publication. Britton had to sue for their return and was successful. The President’s Daughter was a scandalous best-seller and was thought so salacious that some libraries kept it locked away with erotica.

Over the years, many researchers tried to verify or disprove Britton’s claims. She had no physical evidence to speak of, always insisting that she destroyed it all at Harding’s request. In the 1960s, Harding’s most prominent—and infamous—biographer, Francis Russell, published The Shadow of Blooming Grove: Warren G. Harding in his Times, which proved to be an 800 page hatchet job on the long-dead Harding. It was Russell who brought the Carrie Phillips affair to public attention. Russell also believed Nan Britton, a faith many others did not share.

My own interest in this case goes back many years but peaked in 2004 when I wrote “President Warren G. Harding: The Search for Meaningful Historiography,” as a major research requirement for a post-graduate degree I was pursuing as a James Madison fellow at Murray State University in Kentucky. I had long ago read Russell’s book and had recently read Robert Ferrell’s The Strange Deaths of President Harding. Ferrell’s book was a refutation of many Harding myths, including the thinly-worn and demonstrably false claim that Harding was the worst of all presidents. I respected Ferrell’s work and repeatedly referenced it in my own paper, but I disagreed with his conclusion that Britton was lying and had probably been blackmailing Harding. I have a first edition copy of The President’s Daughter, and, while she was immature and melodramatic, I found Britton’s story compelling; I simply suspected that it was true. There was no question that Elizabeth Ann resembled President Harding, and the fact that the late president’s sister initially believed Britton seemed significant to me.

Ferrell’s most interesting evidence was a hotel register signed “G. H. Harvey.” The register was found years after the fact and corresponded to a place and date named in Britton’s book long before. My immediate response to the signature was that it was obviously written by Harding. The Hs  alone were compelling. Ferrell disagreed, producing the names of experts who said the matches were not close enough. I thought this illogical. Realizing that it was the place and date of the register, named years earlier by Britton, combined with the similar letters, that was significant, I responded as follows in footnote 107 of my essay:

Ferrell . . . located a hotel registry corresponding to one of the trysts alleged by Britton. In keeping with Britton’s claim that Harding signed in under an assumed name, the registry bears the signature of ‘G. H. Harvey.’ To the untrained eye, the letters look incredibly like Harding’s (p. 103). Ferrell dismisses this. He was able to find experts who accepted the signature as Harding’s and others who did not. It seems to this writer that Ferrell somehow misses a crucial point. The starting point of the investigation was the date given by Britton. What is the probability that a name and signature bearing such a close resemblance to Harding’s would appear in the right place and on the right date? Ferrell does not consider the question.

It has been clear to me for years that Nan Britton had a physical relationship with Warren G. Harding. I cannot say whether he loved her. We know for certain that he loved Carrie Phillips and that he did not love his wife; he left written testimony of both in his letters to Carrie. It remains possible that Britton blackmailed Harding. Ferrell produced evidence that, at an Eisenhower-Era staff reunion, two 1920s White House mail clerks stated that they opened blackmail letters from a young woman to President Harding and then threw them away in fear that they would face Harding’s wrath for having seen the letters. We do not know whether the woman in question was Nan Britton. Harding was a man of many secrets.

Three times in the past five years, I have traveled to Marion to attend the Warren G. Harding Symposium, sponsored by The Ohio State University at Marion. On these visits, I have become acquainted with President Harding’s grand-nephews, all respected physicians and businessmen, who carry forward the twenty-ninth president’s legacy and do so proudly. It was bequests in Harding’s will that sent their own parents, Harding’s nephews and nieces, on to professional careers, and this set the stage for their own successes. They have never lost sight of this, and they are grateful. The Harding men are a gracious lot. Now that DNA testing has verified that they are all, in fact, second cousins to the grandchild of Nan Britton, it will fall to them to craft the family response and to help reinterpret their great-uncle’s once-again controversial legacy.

Kevin T. Brewer

August 13, 2015